BRATISLAVA, July 19, (WEBNOVINY) — At this Tuesday’s press conference, Slovak Medical Chamber (SLK) President Milan Dragula accused the health insurance companies of spending too much for their own operations and complained that these funds are being missed in providing health care. “We’ve created a monster which eats its own children,” Dragula evaluated the situation. According to his information, last year the insurance companies increased the costs of their own operations by almost 117 percent. “This system is not good, we’ll have to do something about it,” said the president.
Dragula referred to the statements that inefficiency is the problem Slovak healthcare is dealing with. According to him, it is not inefficiency on the part of doctors or hospitals, but on the part of health insurance companies and of how much and from which resources they finance their operations. “If public resources will be wasted this way, I’m not wondering why there is unrest among healthcare providers,” Dragula added. He also emphasized that in 2010 health insurance companies refused to refund procedures worth 89.3 million euro.
SLK claims that while revenue of health insurance companies increased by 7 percent and healthcare costs by 3 percent, operating costs of health insurance companies grew by 117 percent, reaching 242.5 million euros. Dragula says this is by 130.6 million euros more than the 3.5 percent of the overall paid premiums the law allows insurance companies to use. However, it is legal to spend more than 3.5 percent in the case that these funds for operations come from the company’s own resources, sale of redundant property or unused resources for operations from previous years.
Dragula also elaborated on the issue of insufficient financing of one-day care, which, he said, received fewer funds in 2010 than in 2008. He considers this segment to be underfinanced, yet this situation could be changed with using only 1 percent of available resources.
Spokesman for the Health Care Supervision Office Milan Michalic, however, says that the data Dragula discusses is probably misinterpreted. He said that health insurance companies used 3.02 percent of collected premiums for their operations, the rest were other costs. State owned Vseobecna Zdravotna Poistovna (VsZP) informed they spent 3.1 percent of premiums, curbing the operating costs by almost 13.49 percent y/y. Privately-owned Dovera claims to have spent only 3.05 percent of premiums for its operations in 2010, Union informed on a 7 percent costs increase per policy holder.
SITA